University Honors

In the world of video game music (VGM), certain stereotypes have arisen regarding the social media use of American and Japanese composers. American composers are characterized as more enthusiastic about using their social media accounts to give insight into their creative process and personal lives, while Japanese composers are characterized as more tight-lipped. Questioning this trend, along with my recent encounters with labor studies, has led me to the following project: a cross-cultural examination of American and Japanese VGM composers, especially regarding their public presentation and workplace cultures. This research paper first uses sources from YouTube and social media to describe the public interactions of two individual American composers and one group of Japanese composers commonly assumed to have a single public persona. Then, this paper synthesizes these interactions with writings about the video game industry and entertainment labor more broadly in each country to understand how these interactions exemplify, or diverge from, typical relationships between media ecosystems, workplace cultures, and public presentation in the video game industry. At its core, this paper aims to provide examples of VGM composers negotiating public personas in the context of media ecosystems and workplaces undergoing change across borders in the age of social media, which will hopefully serve as a springboard for future research into the social aspects of VGM production.